Karl Reisman

If you can make Morphs work on a rigged mesh, you have qachieve dht eholy grail of Av makers.

in an import from Maya to SL what does [name of item] failed to Upload:MAV_BLOCK_MISSING Upload_InvalidAsset mean? what's the problem with the model?

there is a technique for fur from the Playstation 12 days, called "Fin and Shell" . You extrude "fins" from the vertical edges of your geometry, and "shells" from your horizontal geometry. The fins and sheells are then seperately mapped (Different material ID) to a map with a fur opacity map to it. With the Open Gl mug it's not all together optimal, but sometimes it wioorks well. Uchi Desmoulins used it for the arm and leg furry attatchments for the "Felis" avatar

I am havign a similar problem. Using Maya I want to get offset joints to work. Unfortunately the links to your images in Drop Box are dead. Cannot see the pics.

CAT, stands for "Chharacter Animation Tool" it's a prebuilt animation rig for Max that come native for 3ds Max and dispenses with Biped. It can be used instead of basic bones as well because it has tools that allow for ease of sonctruction and ease of use for animators. Since Max can export BVH files, I thought it might be easier to generate the skeleton, and also animate it to produce theanimations for the AO. If CAT is not supported byt eh max tools, then I guess that's going to be a wash though.

A friend wants to make rigged mesh for Sl. He's a professional, but likes playing. He would like good viodeo tutorials for 3ds max or Maya. He does high level rigging for his day job, but is curious about second life, and wants to see if he can make his monsters as AV's for SL. Perhaps in ime for halloween? --Karl

In an attempt to bring some unity into my possible avatar projects, in terms of generating animations as well as binding the skin, I had a thought to try 3ds Max 2013, Max can export FBX files for animation, as well as theoretically export skinned mesh to Second Life. Not sure if this is true though as the information is sketchy and my attempts, making a Cat rig with the same hierarchy, linkages and names as the official SL skeleton, then binding it, results in DAE files wheree the geometry is correct, but the option to export skinned mesh is grayed out. What am I missing or is it that the exporters do not see CAT bones as official "bones" for the purposes of export into Second Life? Does this mean I ahve to go back to using Maya? Inquuiring Minds, Ect. Scott

Deadf Link at Abloch.com Also no Blender information please as that would requireinstalling blender on my machine and that simply will not do. So where can we get the Adam Bloch files? Or any other? Scott

Essentially we are making Playstation 2 quality game characters in Sl, witht he limitations of that format as well. For wrinkles you have to be artistic about it, in that you have to remember the fundamentals of cloth drapery, compression folds, and stress lines. Completely separate from this would be any book on depicting drapery in drawings and paintings. While I am not a fan of Byrne Hogarth's art books, his book, " Dynamic Drapery" covers the basics. SO what you ahve to do is model the wrinkles inthe mesh, using the art lessosn and observations from life. Also very careful weighting in high polygon situations can me used to create wrinkes for moving areas of the model aroudn the elbows and knees. --Karl

I am doing this for a couple of folks. it does help, the two are of different levels of skkill with mesh, but both are talented in their other work that it's just a case of giving advice. So find someone with skill, and curiosity and jump in. It helps if you both have Drop Box to trade files with, and also the same or at least compatible 3D programs so you can advise. Also a chat program or Skype works well too. --Karl

Don't rig your mesh for this. Just bring it in as a simple mesh attatchment. there is nothing flexi about the mesh. Also bring in al the parts separately and assemble them as a link set in Sl that way it's easier for the purchaser to modify and adjust to fit better. we learned this the hard way on a Flight helmet.

Contrary to the above example there has been a movement amnt the comabt sism (which is where my market is) that vehciles about 100L.I are prohibited. This has caused a few makers to get a little grumpy, but has kept the Sim Smooth. If that standard can be promulgated to Racing and sailing sims , it might help keep the sims smoother, and keep builders more honest, as it forces them to optimize. I have examinedusing Models collected online from various "free model" websites, but generally they are on either end of the polygon scale, and are not optimized for SL, nor made ina way to take advantage of SL's features. Generally parts of the model need to be rebuilt, and if the polygon count is too high the model is "traced" with a lower resolution mesh "cage" , and added interiors. In some cases it's a shortcut, but other times, if you have the skills, it's better to build it from scratch from plans.

Just going from what people were yelling at my face at an undisclosed SL Airport when I mentioned I'd be making some mesh aircraft soon.

hit "ctrl+Alt+D" to bring up the "advanced" menu. go to the "Debug setting", and from that list scroll down to "rendervolumeLOD" the default will probably be 1.25. Change it to 3 or 4 (anythng after four isn't worth it), and meshes, and sculpts wil look nicer, farther away.

No, but many of them are refusintg to run Mesh Clients for superstitious or self serving reasons. (A lot of women won't bu ymesh clothes because those on on-mesh compliant viewers would see them as naked.) Mesh acceptance rates seem to be climbing though. Scott

Actually, for those folks, it was achoice. Some are trunning the Linnux client on reallyc rappy hardware because theya re technopeasants. Others refuse to leave thephoenix client behind. A thid group were formerly , moderately successful Sl businesses that, cannot produce mesh products, and are trying to sell the buggywhips as fast as they can, and decrying the new automobiles. --karl

The tank does indeed have moving tracks and wheels. the turret does indeed track and function, take a look at the Store at the sim Undine Shore to see it in person. Un like the earlier AMOK tanks, because it's mesh, there are no (0) worn attatchments. The combat system is VICE, and BNWCS, and shooting is done in Mouselook. Love the hint about seeing mesh. that's makes sense. also apparently, the newest downloads for the Linden Labds client are set to LOD on and My preference was LOD 3, and they changed the menu so you can't reset it easily. --Karl

true it depends on what you are making, but anything over 20M in any direction in SL, tends to be discouraged by LI problems. Some of the texture resolution issues can be overcome with multiple materials. But for vehicles, and especially indoor furniture, baked AO is essential.

it's impossible to get big smooth and round at the same time in Sl currently. pic two. right now any.. any mesh over 20m in any direction, will cause a huge LI increase if the mesh is "walkable" inside. there is currently a JIRA issue out there on this. But basically nothing over 20M in any direction. right now, I know only of two makers on Sl making full scale zeppellins, one of them is Cody007 Skytower, and he has a nice vicillian Zeppellin, that is walkable.| Scott

This covers a lot of terrain, The bikes are beautiful. I do mesh building as well, but i am coiming from another perspective as one who has had professional experience in the gaming industry, and have absorbed build efficiency over my 2o years at this. For the company I work on in Sl we had only two concerns. L.I. and Physics, since our buisiness is vehicles. it is becoming common that sim owners are adopting a standard (usualy in combat sims) of no vehicles may participate if their LI os over 100. we use that as our creative limit. witht he size penalties currently on mesh we have had to have been very creative. Mesh Chalolenger 2 Tank at Sim, Undine Shore this tank has an LI of 83, and does so by having brutal lowest LODs. the LODs' were hand made, rather than decomposed mesh, and had custom Collision hulls (which resulted in superior off road capabilities.) Howeve3r witht he introduction of this tank there have been complaints by people that they cannot "see" mesh , usually because of having inadequate hardware, I'm not amenable to their arguements, and when working in the game industry we aimed for specific hardware specs for our games. I do not think consideration for inferior hardware should be that much fo a concern, should it? --Karl

baked "shadows dont' work well unless it's a staticvmesh under a specific fixed lighting situation. However, baed ambient occlusion is absolutely necessary for larger objects.

your units were set to meters,and you froze the X-forms and collapsed the stack,right?

you have to Freeze X-form first, and then collapse th4e stack, that should help. You need to make sure there is only one UV layer, because Sl only picks the top layer.

I wish I had known about this I have plenty of Mesh to display and most is under 7 PE/LI. Oh well.

Yes, there is, but to apply that effect is a different command. In the Polygons Tool bar , go to the item "mesh" and under that pick "smooth" and then pplay with the attributes by changing the farious options, When you have it the way you like hit the button" and the mesh should look like what your result would be under "2" on the leyboard. do it again to get the "3" result look alike. This will make the polygon count Huge, though and may makke it too exxpensive to load into SL, so use the smooth option VERY carefully.